In a wireless communication system, User Equipment (UE) changes to the idle state when no service is active in order to reduce power consumption and save radio resources. When the UE is idle, the connection between the UE and the communication network is released. If the communication network wants to contact the UE, the communication network needs to page the UE. Multiple wireless coverage areas adjacent to each other are generally designed in a communication system to control overhead of paging messages. When a UE is idle, the scope of the variable location of the UE tracked by the communication network is a wireless coverage area. If the communication network wants to page a UE when the UE is in a wireless coverage area, the communication network needs only to page the UE within the wireless coverage area that covers the UE. The wireless coverage area here is called a paging area. When the UE leaves the paging area, the UE needs to notify the communication network to update the location information of the UE and request the communication network to allocate a new paging area.
In practical application, if the paging area is too small, the UE may leave the current paging area and enters a new paging area frequently in the motion process, and much location update signaling is generated. If the paging area is too wide, when the communication network pages a UE, the communication needs to send paging messages within a wide scope, which leads to high load of paging. Therefore, in the planning of paging areas in the deployment of a communication network, a tradeoff between the amount of location update signaling and the paging overhead needs to be accomplished.
In some communication networks, multiple small wireless coverage areas are planned to control the coverage of the paging area flexibly and avoid change of the wireless configuration parameters, and one or more small wireless coverage areas generally combine into a larger wireless coverage area which is allocated as a paging area to the UE. The small wireless coverage areas are called “basic paging areas”. If one paging area includes multiple basic paging areas, the UE does not need to initiate location update to the communication network when the UE moves between the basic paging areas. For example, in an Evolved Packet System (EPS), multiple Tracking Areas (TAs) are planned. When allocating paging areas to the UEs, the EPS may allocate one TA or a larger area composed of multiple TAs to a UE as a paging area based on a certain algorithm according to the region, type of the user of the UE, time segment, and other various conditions. A set of TAs included in a paging area allocated to a UE is called a TA list in the EPS. If a paging area allocated to the UE includes multiple TAs, the UE does not need to initiate location update to the EPS when the UE moves between the TAs.
In the prior art, communication technicians perform on-site survey, analyze the adjacent basic paging areas to be potentially visited by the UE after the UE moves to a basic paging area, and then configure this basic paging area and the adjacent basic paging areas to be visited potentially as a TA list into the communication network. When the communication network allocates a paging area to a UE located in this basic paging area, the communication network allocates the configured TA list corresponding to this basic paging area to the UE.